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his own becomes, to them as well as to every body else. When he tells a story, particularly if full of wonders, he takes care to maintain his character for truth and simplicity, by qualifying it with all possible reservations, concessions, and anticipations of objection; such as "in case, at such times as, so to speak, as it were, at least, at any rate.' He seldom uses sea-terms but when jocosely provoked by something contrary to his habits of life; as for instance, if he is always meeting you on horseback, he asks if you never mean to walk the deck again; or if he finds you studying day after day, he says you are always overhauling your log-book. He makes more new acquaintances, and forgets his old ones less, than any other man in the busy world; for he is so compelled to make his home every where, remembers his native one as such a place of enjoyment, has all his friendly recollections so fixed upon his mind at sea, and has so much to tell and to hear when he returns, that change and separation lose with him the most heartless part of their nature. He also sees such a variety of customs and manners, that he becomes charitable in his opinions altogether; and charity, while it diffuses the affections, cannot let the old ones go. Half the secret of human intercourse is to make allowance for each other.

When the Officer is superannuated or retires, he becomes, if intelligent and enquiring, one of the most agreeable old men in the world, equally welcome to the silent for his card-playing, and to the conversational for his recollections. He is fond of astronomy and books of voyages, and is immortal with all who know him for having been round the world, or seen the Transit of Venus, or had one of his fingers carried off by a New Zealand hatchet, or a present of feathers from an Otaheitean beauty. If not elevated by his acquirements above some of his humbler tastes, he delights in a corner-cupboard holding his cocoa-nuts and punchbowl; has his summer-house castellated and planted with wooden cannon; and sets up the figure of his old ship, the Britannia or the Lovely Nancy, for a statue in the garden; where it stares eternally with red cheeks and round black eyes, as if in astonishment at it's situation.

Chaucer, who wrote his Canterbury Tales about four hundred and thirty years ago, has among his other characters in that work a SHIPMAN, who is exactly of the same cast as the modern sailor,-the same robustness, courage, and rough drawn virtue, doing it's duty, without being very nice in helping itself to it's recreations. There is the very dirk, the complexion, the jollity, the experience, and the bad horsemanship. The plain unaffected ending of the description has the air of a sailor's own speech; while the line about the beard is exceedingly picturesque, poetical, and comprehensive. In copying it out, we shall merely alter the old spelling, where the words are still modern.

A Shipman was there, wonned far by west;
For aught I wot, he was of Dartëmouth.
He rode upon a rouncie, as he couth,*
All in a gown of falding to the knee.

A dagger hanging by a lace had he,

*He rode upon a hack-horse, as well as he could.

About his neck, under his arm adown.

The hot summer had made his hew all brown.
And certainly he was a good felaw.

Full many a draught of wine he hadde draw

From Bourdeaux ward, while that the chapman slep.
Of nice conscience took he no keep.

If that he fought and had the higher hand,
By water he sent 'em home to every land.
But of his craft, to reckon well his tides,
His streames and his strandës him besides,

His harborough, his moon, and his lode manage,
There was not such from Hull unto Carthage.
Hardy he was, and wise, I undertake;

With many a tempest had his beard been shake.
He knew well all the havens, as they were,
From Gothland to the Cape de Finisterre,
And every creek in Briton and in Spain.
His barge ycleped was the Magdelain.

When about to tell his Tale, he tells his fellow-travellers that he shall chink them so merry a bell,

That it shall waken all this company:

But it shall not be of philosophy.

Nor of physick, nor of terms quaint of law;
There is but little Latin in my maw.

The story he tells is a well-known one in the Italian novels, of a monk who made love to a merchant's wife, and borrowed a hundred francs of the husband to give her. She accordingly admits his addresses during the absence of her good man on a journey. When the latter returns, he applies to the cunning monk for repayment, and is referred to the lady; who thus finds her mercenary, behaviour outwitted.

TRANSLATION OF

TASSO'S CELEBRATED ODE TO THE GOLDEN AGE,

Beginning," O bella eta dell' oro."

[We should not have ended our present number with this translation, had not the previous matter turned out shorter in the printing than we expected. The transition from a modern seaman to the Golden Age seems no very harmonious piece of contrast; yet we might quote precedent even for this abruptness, in the arrival of Vasco de Gama's Sailors at the Island of Love in Camoens. One of the stanzás has already appeared in this work. A translation of the whole of the Aminta by the Editor is now going through the press.]

O lovely age of Gold;

Not that the rivers rolled

With milk, or that the woods dropped honey dew;
Not that the ready ground

Produced without a wound,

Or the mild serpent had no tooth that slew;

Not that a cloudless blue

For ever was in sight,

Or that the heaven which burns,

And now is cold by turns,

Looked out in glad and everlasting light;

No, nor that ev'n the insolent ships from far

Brought war to new lands, nor riches worse than war,

But solely that that vain

And breath-invented pain,

That idol of mistake, that worshipped cheat,
That Honour,-since so called

By vulgar minds appalled,

Played not the tyrant with our nature yet.

It had not come to fret

The sweet and happy fold

Of gentle human-kind;

Nor did its hard law bind

Souls nursed in freedom; but that law of gold,

That glad and golden law, all free, all fitted,

Which Nature's own hand wrote,-What pleases, is permitted.

Our sorrows and our pains,

These are thy noble gains;

But oh, thou Love's and Nature's masterer,

Thou conq'ror of the crowned,

What dost thou on this ground,

Too small a circle for thy mighty sphere?
Go and make slumber dear

To the renowned and high;

We here, a lowly race,

Can live without thy grace,

After the use of mild antiquity.

Go; let us love; since years

No truce allow, and life soon disappears.

Go; let us love; the daylight dies, is born;

But unto us the light

Dies once for all; and sleep brings on eternal night.

Orders received by the Newsmen, by the Booksellers, and by the Publisher, JOSEPH APPLEYARD, No. 19, Catharine-street, Strand.-Price 2d.

Printed by C. H. REYNELL, No. 45, Broad-street, Golden-square, London.

THE INDICATOR.

There he arriving round about doth flie,
And takes survey with busie, curious eye:
Now this, now that, he tasteth tenderly.

SPENSER.

No. XXIV.-WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22nd, 1820.

ON THE REALITIES OF IMAGINATION.

THERE is not a more unthinking way of talking, than to say such and such pains and pleasures are only imaginary, and therefore to be got rid of or undervalued accordingly. There is nothing imaginary, in the common acceptation of the word. The logic of Moses in the Vicar of Wakefield is good argument here:-" Whatever is, is.” Whatever touches us, whatever moves us, does touch and does move

us.

We recognise the reality of it, as we do that of a hand in the dark. We might as well say that a sight which makes us laugh, or a blow which brings tears into our eyes, is imaginary, as that any thing else is imaginary which makes us laugh or weep. We can only judge of things by their effects. Our perception constantly deceives us, in things with which we suppose ourselves perfectly conversant; but our reception of their effect is a different matter. Whether we are materialists or immaterialists, whether things be about us or within us, whether we think the sun is a substance, or only the image of a divine thought, an idea, a thing imaginary, we are equally agreed as to the notion of it's warmth. But on the other hand, as this warmth is felt differently by different temperaments, so what we call imaginary things affect different minds. What we have to do is not to deny their effect, because we do not feel in the same proportion, or whether we even feel it at all; but to see whether our neighbours may not be moved. If they are, there is, to all intents and purposes, a moving cause. But we do not see it? No;-neither perhaps do they. They only feel it; they are only sentient, a word which implies the sight given to the imagination by the feelings. But what do you mean, we may ask in return, by seeing? Some rays of light come in contact with the eye; they bring a sensation to it; in a word, they touch it; and the impression left by this touch we call sight. How far does this differ in effect from the impression left by any other touch, however mysterious? An ox knocked down by a butcher, and a man

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knocked down by a fit of the apoplexy, equally feel themselves compelled to drop. The tickling of a straw and of a comedy equally move the muscles about our mouth. The look of a beloved eye will so thrill the whole frame, that old philosophers have had recourse to a doctrine of beams and radiant particles flying from one sight to another. In fine, what is contact itself, and why does it affect us? There is no one cause more mysterious than another, if we look into it.

Nor does the question concern us like moral causes. We may be content to know the earth by it's fruits; but how to increase and improve them is a more attractive study. If instead of saying that the causes which moved in us this or that pain or pleasure were imaginary, people were to say that the causes themselves were removeable, they would be nearer the truth. When a stone trips us up, we do not fall to disputing it's existence: we put it out of the way. In like manner, when we suffer from what is called an imaginary pain, our business is not to canvass the reality of it. Whether there is any cause or not in that or any other perception, or whether every thing consist not in what is called effect, it is sufficient for us that the effect is real. Our sole business is to remove those second causes, which always accompany the original idea. As in deliriums for instance, it would be idle to go about persuading the patient that he did not behold the figures he says he does. He might reasonably ask us, if he could, how we know any thing about the matter; or how we can be sure, that in the infinite wonders of the universe, certain realities may not become apparent to certain eyes, whether diseased or not. Our business would be to put him into that state of health, in which human beings are not diverted from their offices and comforts by a liability to such imaginations. The best reply to his question would be, that such a morbidity is clearly no more a fit state for a human being, than a disarranged or incomplete state of works is for a watch; and that seeing the general tendency of nature to this completeness or state of comfort, we naturally conclude, that the imaginations in question, whether substantial or not, are at least not of the same lasting or prevailing description. We do not profess metaphysics. We are indeed so little conversant with the masters of that profound art, that we are never sure whether we are using even it's proper terms. All that we may know on the subject comes to us from some reflection and some experience; and this all may be so little as to make a metaphysician smile; which if he be a true one, he will do good-naturedly. The pretender will take occasion from our very confession, to say that we know nothing. Our faculty, such as it is, is rather instinctive than reasoning; rather physical than metaphysical; rather wise because it loves much, than because it knows much; rather calculated by a certain retention of boyhood, and by it's wanderings in the green places of thought, to light upon a piece of the old golden world, than to tire ourselves, and conclude it unattainable, by too wide and scientific a search. We pretend to see farther than none but the worldly and the malignant. And yet those who see farther, may not all see so well. We do not blind our eyes with looking upon the sun in the heavens. We believe